Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/282

 242 Reviews.

mightier powers than common folk, a feeUng which has caused their subjects to yield to them a prompter and more implicit obedience than if they had known them to be men just like themselves. The second lecture establishes that among certain races and at certain times superstition has strengthened the respect for private property, and has thus contributed to the security of its enjoyment. Examples are here drawn from the various forms of tabu in force in Polynesia, New Zealand, Samoa, the Malay Archipelago, and other places. In the third lecture the effect of superstition in contributing to the respect for marriage and the observance of the rules of sexual morality is considered. It is shown that several races believe that immorality produces baneful effects not only on the persons who indulge in it but on the people at large and on their crops. In this connection Dr. Frazer points out that magic is older than religion. When it is asked, — " How did these people come to regard certain relations of the sexes as unmoral?", he answers that "the problem has often been attacked, but never solved. Perhaps it is destined, like so many riddles of that Sphinx which we call nature, to remain for ever insoluble." In the fourth lecture he considers the influence of superstition in strengthening the respect for human life, and contributing to the security of its enjoyment. This, he points out, depends on the fear of the ghost which haunts the homicide, and results in the various devices for excluding or evading the malevolent spirit of the victim.

This book, with its delightful style and collection of apposite facts, is well adapted to interest students of anthropology and sociolos:v. W. Crooke.

Gaelic Fairy Tales. Edited by Winifred M. Parker. Glasgow: Sinclair, 1908. 8vo, pp. 48. lUus.

This, the second edition of the Three Gaelic Tales called " The Spirit of Eld " {Spiorad na h-aotse), " The Eagle of Loch Treig" {lolaire Loch-Treig), and "The Good Housewife" {A bhean Tig/ie MkatJi), impresses us afresh with the persistence